Last year, the South Suburban Parks and Recreation District trained over 150 lifeguards and water safety instructors in the indoor swimming pool at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton.

Today that pool, used not only by lifeguards-in-training, but by hundreds of metro-area residents for swim practice, water aerobics, water polo and more, is threatened with closure. As one of more than 500 users of that pool, I am trying to keep it open.

ACC president Diana Doyle says it is not a question of expense. Instead, there just aren’t enough college students using the pool. She believes her students would prefer a wellness program emphasizing yoga and Pilates, to swimming or water aerobics. Though there are several private yoga studios near the college, there is not enough classroom space on campus for yoga classes, so filling in the pool and converting that space to a yoga studio is, she said, her only alternative. She has earmarked $500,000 of Colorado tax dollars to make the conversion.

Yoga is unquestionably a currently popular form of exercise, especially among college-age students. But doctors laud swimming as the best available lifetime “Wellness Program.” According to USA Swimming, the governing body for Olympic swimming in the US, there are an estimated 76 million Americans who swim 25 times or more each year, making swimming the nation’s #1 participatory sport.

Beyond the fitness benefits, there is also an unquestionable public health benefit to maximizing the availability of swimming pools. Over 6,000 children and adults drown each year in the U.S. in swimming-related accidents. According to experts writing in The American Journal of Public Health, “All drowning deaths are potentially preventable.” More than 100 million Americans do not know how to swim.

The debate over the pool’s future is really about the definition of “community” in the name Arapahoe Community College. The taxpayer-supported college was founded 50 years ago with tax money fronted by residents of Littleton. Over time, the college became part of the state’s community college system, with a mission, “to serve Colorado residents who reside in their service areas by offering a broad range of general, personal, vocational, and technical education programs,” as stated in Colorado law.

Since its construction in 1977, the pool has been an important part of that mission, filling a niche missed by the handful of other metro Denver year-round pools available for public use. Included is training lifeguards for several metro-area recreation departments and community association pools, hosting high school swim teams, providing practice space for Masters swim programs and offering a training pool for past Olympic medalists and today’s young Olympic hopefuls. During the past year, community users amassed over 65,000 hours in the water at ACC.

Community users of this asset do not swim there for free. During FY 13-14, organized groups and classes paid enough in rental fees for the pool to show a modest “profit”.

The potential consequences of the pool’s closure are profound. Because of lack of space elsewhere, one of the Masters swim teams now using ACC three mornings per week will dissolve. Kent Denver School will likely discontinue its swim program. The competitive youth swim club including young Olympic hopefuls will go out of business and most of its members will be forced to give up competitive swimming. The Silver Sneakers could lose their water aerobics program.

Does it really make sense to destroy a community asset, actively used by over 500 people in the community, in the name of creating a yoga studio for the limited number of college students who would actually use it? If lack of available classroom space is the only other reason to fill in the pool, wouldn’t the State’s $500,000 be more wisely spent constructing new multi-purpose classrooms?

We hope that Dr. Doyle might have a change of heart, or that the board of the state’s community college system might help her review alternatives in order to preserve this asset for the continued enjoyment of the “community” and the health and safety of our residents.

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